


They Call It Madness

by abbichicken



Category: X-Men: First Class (2011) - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe, Developing Relationship, M/M, Mind Games, Serial Killers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-01-08
Updated: 2012-01-08
Packaged: 2017-10-29 04:53:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,291
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/316033
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/abbichicken/pseuds/abbichicken
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: A powered or non-powered AU where Charles and Erik meet while hunting down escaped serial killer!Shaw and end up stranded in a remote cabin in the middle of a blizzard with Shaw on the loose.</p><p>So, this is the beginning of that story...and hopefully in the not-too-distant future, it will also be the middle, and the end of it!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sparkysparky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sparkysparky/gifts).



_He's not even wearing black..._

And yet, the figure in front of him may as well be invisible, for the way he walks, casually as Saturday morning, Harris tweed and polished shoes, right up to the man crouched in the bushes by the park gate, rifle clamped to his shoulder, covering the entrance to Erik's target's London home, and knocks him spark out, with no more, no less, it seems, than a touch to the head.

Must be a...a thing. Japanese, perhaps. About pressure points. Erik's heard there are ways to knock a man out that don't involve brute force. Do they, he wonders, also give the same satisfaction? Not that efficiency isn't as welcome as satisfaction, but...when it's personal, Erik likes to lay a trail as deep in screaming understanding as he can.

As the sniper falls back, the inappropriately-dressed assassin has the decency to catch his body with the ease and grace of someone who's done this...a lot. Is the sniper...dead? Dead weight, anyway. Erik shifts back into the branches, the tangled cover he's taken at the edge of the Berkeley Square gardens, and watches as the man mugs his prey for something, then uses it - a key, then - to enter the vast townhouse Erik's come to stake out right by the front door. Blasé as anything.

Of the few wandering the park's perimeter, no-one notices the sniper laid out on the ground. A woman pushing a pram walks straight past him. Londoners, Erik thinks, without a conclusion to the thought.

Erik waits. He debates, for a moment, following him in - for if Shaw has two enemies, then perhaps they'll be able to play this out together - but then, Erik doesn't ever play well with others, and he has no plans to spin this out any further than a spit, a stab and a kick. It's not worth risking what would, if only he could find the man, a quick and easy kill.

Shaw may be a serial killer, he may be foxing Europe's finest, but Erik has spent so long tracking him down, studying his behaviour, his murders, his background, he feels he's got the upper hand.

It's personal. There's a reason Erik's so devoted to the cause, but that's nobody's business but his own. And even finding Shaw seems to require that devotion, because no-one else has come even close to catching him. Erik has evidence of murders Shaw's committed in places as diverse as Las Vegas, Geneva and Nairobi, but his focus of late has been London, Paris and Berlin. He's talked of as the reincarnation of Jack the Ripper, and as such has generated a nervous excitement amongst the public, as if he were a fairytale, rather than a fact. And amongst the authorities, he is thought of in much the same way. No-one expects to stop him. They half-expect, half-hope that, in some dreadful and gory way, Shaw will reveal himself, his twisted motivations to them all, as if he were a stage play with an inevitable conclusion.

They're all closer to the truth than they dare hope, and Erik suspects as much, but Erik, unlike the creeping public, has no fantasy about this situation. He knows Shaw's game. And that he mustn't ever be allowed to make his public reveal - a thing that would be infinitely more terrible than the public can possibly imagine.

So who is this, that breezes on in to what Erik has deduced, after months of travel and study, to be Shaw's London base?

Just as quick as he pushed in, so he's out again. Erik squints, looking for...what? Spots of blood on the collar? An expression of...fear? Neither are present. The man shuts the front door carefully behind him, and returns the way he came. The only difference between the before and after is that he's carrying a smart leather briefcase.

An accomplice?

The man bends to the sniper, still on the floor, and strokes his head. Pushing dark, matted hair away from a grimy face, he leans close and...speaks. Then walks away.

The sniper lies still a moment or two longer, and then rises to his feet, rubbing his eyes and clapping his hands to his gun in momentary panic. He looks as if he's been asleep for a year or more. And then he melts back into the cover he'd been in before his well-dressed assailant laid him out like so much afternoon tea.

Erik brushes leaves and dirt from his shoulders, removes a twig from his hair, and exits the bush, ostensibly buckling his belt as if he's been caught short, should he need to excuse himself to curious eyes.

He lights a cigarette, like a cover for slow, indirect walking, and sets off. Just far enough behind the tweed assassin to look as if he isn't following him.

So, when, after five minutes or so of dotting through side roads and cutting by alleyways, he loses sight of the man, Erik is shocked. He was there. Right there in front of him, on a road that, for central London at this time of night, is comparatively empty. But he's gone, in less than the blink of an eye.

No bus stops. No doorways. Locked down shopfronts and streetlamps and barely a light on. No sound of...look, no nothing. He's just gone.

Erik keeps on walking so's not to be any more conspicuous, but then he stamps out the end of the cigarette, takes another from his jacket and turns back, as if shielding himself from the wind, to light it.

"You were following me?"

Asked as a question, posed, point blank, from the man in tweed who is _right there_ in his face. In the filthy orange glow of London-by-night, he appears simultaneously boyish and old, shadows creasing his forehead, eyes wide and reflecting the dull lamplight.

Erik says nothing.

"I know you were following me: let's not discuss that. And also, I don't think we need to discuss our common interest."

Erik's face contorts to suggest that actually, the only thing they ought to discuss is their common interest, but...no. All he receives in return is a wide smile.

"Shall we go have a quiet drink somewhere?"

And, inexplicably, Erik finds that that is exactly what he wants to do.

Across a heavy wooden table, stained with god knows how many years of beer and woebetides, Charles (introduced as if it was something Erik ought to already know) reaches out and fingers the cuff of Erik's jacket, a touch intrusively. "This is a very nice cloth," he observes, 'and a good cut on you, too."

The touch leads Erik to a flinch, and a shot of discomfort.

When Erik once more fails to answer the leading statement, Charles shakes his head, grins, and drinks a good half of his pint.

"You don't say much, do you? Never mind, there's no useful answer to that. I'll be honest with you - because I think of all people, I can be honest with _you_ , can't I, Erik - and tell you that _I don't need you to say anything at all_."

So Erik doesn't.

Charles appears to be perfectly comfortable with keeping up a monologue, and, strangely, answers many of the more benign questions Erik might've asked of him all the same if he'd decide to treat this as a social, rather than investigative, situation. Charles is with "Scotland Yard. You know. That kind of thing." It's not quite an answer, but it's telling enough. "I have some skills that are rather...unique. I know you know what I mean. I'm a talented man." The way he winks is 50% salacious, 50% eerie. Erik doesn't know what he means. Charles continues. He lectures, he explains, on criminal psychology. On motivation. "At Oxford, you know." Erik has never been to Oxford, but Charles tells him how beautiful the colleges are before he can interject - which he wouldn't have.

As they talk - as Charles talks, endlessly, and Erik listens, all his usual disinclinations spread aside, and as they drink, drink, and drink some more, Erik is waiting to find the catch, to find out what this is all about, to get the overview of Charles' game, because there must be a game being played, he must be being played somewhere, but it doesn't come. The man is as up front, as clear, as engaging as any he's ever met.

Erik wants to run. He knows that, inside him, is an Erik that wants to get away and get back to his hotel room and preferably with that damn suitcase to put some more pieces of his puzzle together, but he can't...because...the rest of him wants only to stay, and listen, and...smile.

It's infuriating.

The beer is good, though, and Erik has one more than he ought, which leads him to two more than he ought, which results in trying to quell the fear of excess and stupidity with a bolt or two (or three?) of excellent whisky which Charles says he really must try, whilst he's in the area...

...he's not going to wake up with a raging hangover, tied to a chair being assaulted for information, tortured by an accomplice of Shaw's as a punishment for his persistence, in a bed fuck knows where with god only knows who...

...he's not...

Icy rain is a blast of consciousness, an enveloping swirl between hail and snow. It's grim, and vicious. There's laughter behind the rush of the wind in his ears.

"Come on, answer me!" the voice comes, and Erik squints through blurring vision and weather to the man dressed up for Sunday afternoon in the library.

"I...I..."

"Where are you staying?"

Erik shakes his head. He remembers the address, of course he does. Of course he does. But he's not going to give it to a stranger. And he's not going to just...let this man go, either, because he needs something from him...

 _...fucking why did I drink so much..._

The man is peering closely at him.

"Don't worry," he offers, decisively, with a smile that suggests an understanding that Erik doesn't feel is quite deserved, "you can come to the Club with me. There's always room."

"Club?"

"The Arts Club."

"Arts...Club?"

Erik's trailed plenty of places in London but here's somewhere that's escaped him.

"It's very welcoming. To members, at least."

"You're an artist?"

"In a manner of speaking."

 _Fucking con artist..._ Erik thinks.

"Oh, it's a little more noble than that..." Charles offers, and when Erik looks at him in confusion, certain that _he_ didn't say anything out loud, Charles looks back at him as if he didn't either.


	2. Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things are not as they should be, and Erik is in a very unusual position...

Erik chastises himself for having succumbed to this situation throughout a cab ride which is passed in silence on their part, and with a running commentary on the peculiarity of the weather these days from the driver. He asserts clearly to himself that he is following Charles only to discover what connection that he has to Shaw, and whether he's to be made an enemy of, or whether he is in fact truly as genial as he appears (in which case, what on earth is he doing so mixed up in something as gritty and grim as this case? 'Scotland Yard...kind of thing' doesn't inspire the confidence of a true, badge-waving copper, if, in these days of corruption and bribery, there's any confidence to be found in even that gesture...).

But as the cab pulls up at a nondescript terrace of houses, even as Erik swims to wonder what on earth kind of club this could be, not like any of the gentlemen's clubs he's talked his way into in London, nor in any other city, come to that, but then he once more finds himself not caring, not thinking, slipping into happy obedience, following like a nervous new puppy, the confident, strident Charles Xavier.

And then there's nothing at all.

* * *

The bed is _extremely_ comfortable. For the last two months Erik has been sleeping in London parks and terrible bed and breakfasts in Dover and Norfolk, where morning brings either a suspicious do-gooder, or the terrible itch of bedbugs and the tearing horror of viciously broken mattress springs. He's incurred more scars from his sleeping arrangements than from any kind of combat, this past year, so to come to consciousness in the embrace of clean-scented sheets and duck-down quilting is beyond a luxury.

Erik dreamt of the circus. A swirling, yelping whirl of gaiety, a contortionist unlike any he'd ever seen before, a boy conjuring balls of flame left, right and centre, making them dance, then implode into nothing...a quietly playful woman who could make it rain over your head, or twist lightening in her palm, a huge strongman who would lift anyone with one hand, and throw them and catch them with it at that...a naked, painted lady who appeared and disappeared, and a girl who appeared to be able to run through walls...a cacophany of the bizarre, where performances took no turn, where tables were danced upon and sunk through, and where Erik...where Erik had been given one glass after another of something sweet and cloying and despicably moreish which made his heart sing in a way that it never had before...Erik's heart is resolutely non-musical, and ought at all times to be subject only to the demand for blood throughout his veins...but in a dream, anything is possible.

Possible, but for Erik, not probable.

Even his dreams are usually much more functional than this. Strategic, or at the very least metaphorical, being chased, chasing, hunting strange and spiny animals through a thousand landscapes, flashback-orientated, reminded him always of his motivations and investments in the case, and at their worst, they are nothing but he and Shaw in a room, eye-to-eye, staring and haunting, making a point that is never revealed in the dream itself, always pushing Erik to an edge, where he knows he would - will - finish this himself, whatever the consequences, and he always wakes up sweating, furious, up in an instant and ready to go, pushed by his subconscious right to the place he needs to be at to begin yet another day of patient, persistent tracking and watching and biding his time and trying all the while to prevent anyone else from having to go through the experiences he's had.

On the edge of it there is no reason that today should begin any differently, but it takes Erik, warm, sleepy, comfortable Erik, more than some time to realise that this is not the normal order of things, that these dreams, that this level of _cosiness_ is not at all that which he is used to, and that the abnormality of the situation does not end with this realisation, no, but that there are at least three more things of confusing, and distressing note, all of which affect the way he will so much as open his eyes, never mind move.

1\. His head is _pounding_ , his throat is dry and his shoulders are strangely sore.

2\. He has slept for a long, long time. It's well into the afternoon; this he can tell even without looking, as there is sunlight, warm on his face, from a window.

3\. There is a hand resting on his side, and a warm, breathing body lying behind him.

Last of all, and connected largely to point #3, Erik notices that he is naked, not something he has been near anyone else for longer than he can remember.

This is all particularly concerning, not least because he cannot so much as feel where his knife, or his gun might be, and because he has no recollection of the events that led him to this position.

He searches the edges of the dream, already slipping away from him, for some clue as to what might have been happening to him before he went to bed last night, because there is a gaping hole where there that vital information should be, and at the very least there should be some kind of analagous memory hidden in the chaos, but no, no, there isn't a thing to be learned, only fading senses of beauty and colour and wonder, with no possible meaning behind them.

Erik tries to formulate a plan, tries to feel for his weapons, testing from his fingertips, for he ought, truly, to be able to sense them if they're in the room, but there's nothing, or maybe it's that he's so addled, that his head's so sore that he can't focus properly - it wouldn't be the first time. He shouldn't be in this state, and he really ought to remember what happened last night, he really shouldn't...even when he's been so drunk he couldn't walk, in times past, he's never blacked out before, he's never had bits of his night go missing, and there's an increasing part of his mind telling him not to worry about that, not to fixate on that, to calm down, take a deep breath... _enjoy yourself, Erik, focus on how comfortable you are, you deserve a bit of comfort, yes you do, even you...you can't be at your best when you're living perpetually on the edge..._

The internal dialogue takes shape and form in his mind and Erik feels like a spectator to himself, to a rationale that he doesn't feel is entirely his own, and then that curls around too, enveloping him, _trust yourself, Erik_ because Erik does trust himself, completely and utterly, and if he doesn't remember last night then last night didn't matter, and it's true, this bed _is_ incredibly comfortable, and the body behind him is warm and -

\- there's a body behind him, there's a hand on his side, and he is naked, what the fuck -

\- like a car encountering black ice, Erik's mind swerves viciously off course, then rights itself, reels back at him, _but it doesn't matter, does it? Does it? You wouldn't be in bed with just anyone. Trust yourself, Erik_.

Erik doesn't remember his brain working like this.

And he doesn't remember ever, ever deciding that he could relax, and rest, and simply...push his memories to one side, but there it is. It seems like such, such a good idea to simply...breathe, deeply, slowly, evenly...relax, enjoy the warmth, enjoy the softness, yes, there...

...and back to sleep.

* * *

Erik is surprisingly easy to manipulate, Charles reflects. For all that he is focused and determined and driven - in such a way that it virtually oozes from his every fibre - there is a part of him that is horribly open to control and to suggestion. Charles is uneasy at first about taking advantage of him, so obvious is the fact that this openness comes from terrible experiences and a frankly hideous level of conditioning, but then again, he knows the full story, whereas Erik has only half, and that from a skewed perspective, and even less idea of the full story here.

After the initial scan of the forefront of Erik's mind, it was more than clear to Charles that, most crucially, he could not be left alone in the landscape of this case, given his particulars, but also that he could be incredibly useful to Charles in his pursuit of it. And behind all that, there is a little more. A suggestion of something that could become something else. Charles encircles that something with his own mind, and ties it tight, as best he can. Erik is a challenge to them all, and it will be better if he is amongst, rather than apart, from them.


End file.
